“Senator Reid, you have no grade point average.”

Be. very. afraid.

How about an “I” for “Imcomplete”.

Sold!!!!!

Best grade possible for this Congress.

…the IAVA, seem to be using very strange criteria for grading Congress. The supposedly non-partisan group’s founder is working for Team Obama.

There are a lot of folks who’ve served in uniform. They came to the service from all over, many pre-9/11, like myself (twice) for the benefits. Some for genuinely patriotic yearnings…and some because they’d seen “Rambo” one too many times.

Some came to the service and grew up. In 16 years on active duty from Vietnam to Desert Storm, I saw a lot of these. Some grew bitter. I remember one guy, a medic, who crawled into the…er…analgesic portion of his medic bag and set up a patrol base after some of the stuff he saw.

Some changed their minds after enlisting, either right-ward or left-ward. I was a junior guy for a while on a Special Forces, the senior man of which was a classical California liberal…he even drove a SAAB. Another I went to SF school with was a former San Francisco black activist. I also remember guys who’d've made Goldwater flinch.

Service doesn’t dictate point of view…except that all of us who served think that the food was generally bad, that our officers were generally lost (with exceptions), and that we’d all attended the “last hard class” of whatever courses we attended. We also learned how to bitch…some of us creatively.

Still, from where I served in the military — one of the most unsympathetically right-wing organizations in the Department of Defense, would’ve given the Waffen SS cold sweats — folks were generally laissez-faire, and generally reflected the region in which they were stationed while stationed there.

This means that the blacks, if voting today, would generally vote for Obama, the rednecks for McCain, the northeastern guys whose educations made careers outside fast-food service or the military impractical would support Nader, etc.

Still, there’s a line of thinking that reflects the “divide-and-conquer”, patron/client paternalistic thinking of the Left among some veterans, and they gin-up veterans-on-the-Left organizations…just as there are police organizations that the Left can count on during gun-rights debates. They are the creatures of party.

The IAVA?

I did some looking into the group on Wikipedia (a good place to start, so long as you take what you find with a truckload of salt), suspecting (by their supposed ratings of Biden, etc.) that they were hardly the non-partisan group they might claim to be.

What I found, after a very short time, about this guy, Paul Rieckhoff, seems innocent enough. It seemed innocuous because it was obviously put onto open-source Wikipedia by the IAVA itself…neutral, not saying much, complimentary, vague. I found this about him:

He appears every Tuesday evening on The Rachel Maddow Show on Air America Radio.

…that does it for me. Zeroes him right in.

…look…the guy can think for himself, and think what he wants…he’d just be careful around me talking about being “an independent organization and is not affiliated with any groups other than our sister (c)4, IAVA Action Fund” (from their page). The old saw about “don’t p*ss down my back and tell me it’s rainin’” comes into play here.

These guys are appear to my bullsh*t detector to be yet another grievance advocacy, a safe source of friendly bullet points from the party which holds their leash.

They may do good work, and I hope they do. They may disagree with my characterization of them, and they are free to. In fact, they’re free to think as they wish, vote as they wish, move about the country at will, and even to buy me a beer whenever the mood strikes ‘em. That’s why they served. That’s why I served. I expect them to feel the same, whether they do or not.

They’d just better not expect me to take them at face value. This ain’t my first rodeo.

Unless you are talking about elections. In that case winning is everything!

F as in FUBAR?

Mr. Joe on October 9, 2008 at 7:26 PM

Are you referring to the NRA’s announcement this morning? Oh, wait — that would be FUBARR.

Multiple political ads also for the Candaian PM election. Linking Harper to Bush, the Liberal candidate (ol’ whatizname)getting trashed for his carbon tax…idiot.
Oh Canada!

freebird on October 9, 2008 at 7:46 PM

Oh Good Lord! As if having to endure one nation’s political advertisements isn’t enough!

Dingleberry?

grapeknutz on October 9, 2008 at 7:47 PM

Explain.

Coulter: Somebody please tell me that Biden wasn’t picked for the Democrat ticket based on his knowledge of foreign policy.

LOL because I can’t think of any other reason why Biden might be a heartbeat away from the presidency occupied by a man who quotes his college transcript when it comes to his experience with foreign affairs (wish that was hyperbole).

Biden really DOES look like a Klingon!

SouthernGent on October 9, 2008 at 7:23 PM

Dingleberry?

Ann Coulter slams Biden as only Ann can.
SouthernGent on October 9, 2008 at 7:42 PM

And it’s always the same dorks who tell us not to bring up Biden’s self-agrandizing. It’s a bunch of crap.

ManlyRash on October 9, 2008

Oh Ralphie!
Watching the Red Wings and the Leafs on HNIC. Multiple political ads also for the Candaian PM election. Linking Harper to Bush, the Liberal candidate (ol’ whatizname)getting trashed for his carbon tax…idiot.
Oh Canada!

Well, considering the mass media is using the hack grades given out by the IAVA in order to call Republicans anti-troops and Democrats pro-troops, it may have an impact on ignorant voters who don’t realize that the IAVA is a group of partisan hacks working for Obama and Soros.

Michael in MI on October 9, 2008 at 7:39 PM

Fair enough. I’m on the Vet’s for Freedom e-mail list so maybe I just see this stuff often enough that I’m jaded on these non-story stories and don’t appreciate their effects.